How Ancient Maya Communities Turned Ruins Into Weapons of Power

How Ancient Maya Communities Turned Ruins Into Weapons of Power

Buildings buried by the rapid burial of Actuncan’s Late Preclassic civic center. Credit: David W. Mixter / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 A new study argues that ancient Maya communities lived alongside ruins not as passive bystanders but as active participants who shaped, reclaimed, and politicized the decaying structures around them. David W. Mixter of the Environmental Studies Program at Binghamton University published the research in Latin American Antiqui…